Stunning Brilliance!

Recently watched "Cross-Fire Hurricane," an HBO documentary about the Stones.  It's kind of a visual snapshot of some of the events much more fully explored in Keith's great book.  You get a little visual whiff of  the Stone's glory years from the mid sixties to the mid seventies.  Pretty amazing story.

The band was born into a maelstrom of sex, drugs & violence.  And they embraced their bad boy image with enthusiasm.  There was a time when rock & roll really was the sound-track of our lives, and those Stone's songs resonated with great social & cultural significance.  There was a true "counter-culture" and the Stones were at the forefront of it, whether they wanted to be or not.

There are flashes too of the Stones from the 80's onward.  The shows got bigger, the audiences got broader, the great bounty of money flowed in,  the band traversed the world like a great r&r dinosaur and they were embraced by the mainstream culture. The music sort of shrunk, got smaller, nearly got swallowed in all the flash and thunder of the 24 hr. media monster.  Still those r&r gems from the early years have never really been tarnished. Stunning brilliance...